Microsoft today announced it has now shipped 10 million Kinect units worldwide to retailers - not sold to consumers - since launch in November.
Despite Microsoft's experience in hardware manufacturing, I don't trust it not to fumble its first gaming handheld device which may eventually lead to a successor not getting released.
Unless it has some fature that really makes it standout I don't think someone who wants a handheld will pick it when the Switch 2 is just around the corner and the Steam Deck offers a huge library with much better prices worldwide
Especially since the existing PC handhelds (Steam Deck, ROG Ally, etc) can already run Gamepass. I don't have a Steam Deck yet, but I did see Forza Horizon 5 already running pretty well on it natively, so I'd imagine most XBox exclusives on Steam would run pretty well too. The most Microsoft could do is try to brute force a more expensive, higher power handheld. I doubt it would do well if that were the case.
This has been my point. It’s too little too late, and there are too many options out now that can already do the same thing with similar or better tech, in a similar price-range. A best case scenario for them is slightly above Steam-Deck performance at $100 less, but that’s not a huge selling point for anyone who has already jumped into the handheld PC market, and people still on the fence. Or go the other route of as cheap as possible but making it a streaming only device around $199.
It would do well and reach over 1m sold just because of the Xbox branding, but their consoles are already selling less and less (by the looks of it), so I don’t see a handheld being this great savior for them.
They simply need to rebrand one of the Surface tablets into the device with dedicated controls and more gaming focused, and call it a day instead of heavily investing in a handheld
I'm guessing Xbox Wireless will be a streaming system like PS Portal. And yes I fully expect their portable Xbox to be given a really stupid name like "Wireless." Maybe even a dumber name like the Xbox Series W.
Doesn't make much sense to have a handheld that is locked down to the Xbox ecosystem when the PC handheld can run everything. I'm sure the same people that bought the Xbox fridge will give Microsoft their free money though.
Microsoft handheld Qualcomm based... you will see it next year... and you will see it sink.
After having to prove itself for years, Xbox doubled down and pulled it off..
Yep Xbox absolutely knocked it out of the park with that stunning show, it was everything a gaming showcase should be, games games and games, well done team Xbox.
It really did. Like I came out of that with the hype for new games I haven’t felt since… well the better years of E3.
It was without a doubt one of the better showcases in years. There was plenty there that excited me. Something has been lacking in years on all platforms
It was an amazing showcase I loved everything about it. Can't wait to play some of those games.
What's going on. 4 comments & no negatives yet. Wow, what's going on with N4G.
Show was so good, it made me forget about that blue dragon rumor until the next day. Too many games to process.
Shahmeer from eXputer: "The new Xbox strategy to go multi-platform could eventually change console gaming as we know it, and I am concerned."
Can we stop pretending that Xbox has any great influence over the console market?
All they can do is try and steer their own Destiny. They have very little to do with what the other players in the console market are doing.
And yes, going 3rd party is pretty much their only option and is good for them.
Still whatever little direct competition they're offering against Sony ... that'd be gone, which is never good for consumers.
I know Sony will continue to apease the gamers but without any proper competition in same space, they might not work at the fullest efficiency.
(Taking into account, thats generally been agreed here, that Nintendo has long been not the direct competitor to either MS or Sony)
The " without any proper competition in same space, they (Sony) might not work at the fullest efficiency" narrative has been proven false for years. Let's stop pretending that, in terms of games, Xbox has been any competition to Playstation.
Sony had 0 competition for most of its playstation business, and they still succeeded, the only thing xbox introduced was paid online and dlc
Sony had little to no competition during the PS2 era and they have an iconic catalog.
I don't think Sony needs competition in the console space to still release great games. It would be the games that would be competing against each other.
Xbox does not need to exist for PlayStation to have competition.
They compete with Nintendo, PC, streaming and countless other devices.
Yes release games on other platforms
Your own gamers still get the games day one on GP. So GP will grow and stay stabilize
By releasing the games on PC,PlayStation and next switch they can get $70 for their games.
MS didn't invest 100 billion for nothing. This way Xbox generates way more revenue
I mean, yes, it was an Activision, Blizzard, Bethesda presentation, they just so happened to buy all of those publishers, nothing we would not have seen on any other award show if they had not bought developers that were and STILL are developing multiplatform games.
If you remove them you are left with Microsoft game studios, another Fable, Another Gears, Perfect Dark which for me didn't look all that great, Avowed, Age of mythology and south of midnight (might be missing something I guess)
No better than any other show. There weren't any major new announcements, which is what everyone has been complaining about. The bar shouldn't get lowered for a trillion dollar company.
"another Fable, another Gears, Perfect Dark"?
That's a lot of pretty great "anothers".
I could use a few of those "anothers" from Sony right now.
Yes it was a really great showcase that Xbox had. Multiplats and all. Overall it was really cool
Perfect Dark looked amazing! Wouldn't mind seeing something like that from Sony tbh.
anast,
"All these games are coming to PS5."
Very disingenuous statement... Some, but not all.
Oh, so that is the new narrative, "sub-show for Sony." lol, wow.
The sad part is that you are clearly and fully aware that it is very unlikely for any 1hr and 30min gaming presentation show to showcase ALL Exclusives, it just doesn't happen.
And don't you think it sad that MS had a better Sony showing than Sony? If I were you, I wouldn't consider that a flex, lol.?
They are coming to PS5, the ones that matter of course.
There is nothing sad here. You might need to start your argument without an emotive.
I don't think they had a better showing. Unless we lower the bar for only Xbox.
None of us really know how much they're going third party. They're still ACTING like they want to protect the platform - no mention of PS5 in their show, still marketing the console, still using the Xbox logo.
Yeah Phil acknowledged more is coming to PS5. But is that Indiana Jones? Perfect Dark? Gears?
If they keep those key properties in their stable it's not accurate to label them as simply 3rd party.
They may very well still be in the game after all...
@Coconut
Sony did the same in their last. They showed games that were already announced.
We need to stop pretending like Xbox matters and has any influence in the industry.
By entering the industry, Microsoft made it worst, everything bad in the industry can be tied to them (like paid online and DLCs). The industry would be better off if they had never been in it.
Before you say Sony would have no competition, they would still have PC and Nintendo. As they are right now, Microsoft are not competition, they don't actually matter.
I think you're mostly right. They've been failing on console and will most likely drop out.
But the concern a lot of us had was that they would use their $ to win monopolistically. They've already bought a huge number of big studios. Going multi-platform would alleviate that concern.
But they could still turn the screws, this game isn't over quite yet... They're sending mixed signals.
I think in Xbox’s direness it is, but let’s not pretend like they don’t understand the value of exclusiveness to their platform. Not every damn Xbox game is coming to PS5 and the stuff that has hit have either been GaaS games or games that didn’t exactly sell gamgbusters and are extremely niche.
When Halo, Gears, Forza, Perfect Dark, Fable, etc. start coming to PS5 then that’s pretty massive and also diminishes any reason to own an Xbox.
Doom isn't niche. It was heavily implied that all Bethesda games, outside of games with contractual agreements and the existing multiplayer games, would all be exclusive to Xbox.
Ok, sorry, Doom is the exception.
My point is Xbox is still keeping exclusives for their bigger games. What’s been released are GaaS: Sea of Thieves, Grounded aka Honey I Shrunk the Kids, and then niche stuff like Pentiment and Hi-Fi Rush. Then you got Doom coming out, which is an outlier, I suppose.
It's not niche but it's not everything.
MS has got a HUGE cache of IP and studios now
It's the only decision. Hardware sales are on a sharp decline and Game Pass growth has stagnated.
This is why i hate number/sales war. We always end up hearing that they are actually shipped a few weeks later.
Either way to me, shipped essentially means that they will be sold eventually, it may not be 10 million right now but in 2-4 months it might be.
That being said i'm curious at what are the real numbers, we keep hearing MS gloat about Kinect numbers and yet they havn't gave new numbers for it other then shipped. Which gets me thinking can companies really track how many have actually been sold to consumers? I mean we keep hearing sold and then weeks later it turns to shipped.
@ below
idk i prob. will end up getting disagrees but i think all companies report ship to retailers, or if that's not the case then why is MS always reporting shipped and stating them as sold? They really like to inflate numbers then.
either way like i said these shipped will all be sold eventually as we will hear it again prob around E3 or something after saying Kinect is at 15 million now since launch. I bet real sales are around 7-8 million. Because i really don't think there is 5million Kinect sitting at retailers, 2-3 sound more realistic.
@Pixelated Army
Reading is your pal. They didn't claim Kinect was the fastest selling device out of their asses, it was confirmed by Guiness World Records and it was for a period of 60 days, not till 10 million. You can even check their official page:
http://community.guinnesswo...
As for MS being 'notorious' for sold/shipped numbers, get real, they all report shipped numbers.
As for the news, well fu*kin done. They try to downplay shipping 10 million units in 90 days as something bad, when at first they all thought it was going to flop beyond belief. Now they have to spin successful news.
@Pixelated Army
What part of 'No company says 'shipped' you don't understand? Not even Sony says shipped when they report Move shipped numbers, so why is is Microsoft the only one that need to specify "shipped' when No One Else Does? They ALL say sold, or something along those lines.
Well done ms.
Yes N4G....I am trolling by posting FACTS about MS and their channel stuffing of product to inflate sales goals....and I did it using YOUR ARTICLE....so you know what N4G? That means YOU ARE TROLLING TOO.
Hypocrites you are.
http://n4g.com/news/34743/m...
We will know soon enough when MS has to eventually STOP stuffing the channel. Can even ONE PERSON tell me they saw Kinect sold out...stand alone? Ever wonder WHY that is the case?
Live in your world of make beLIEve if you want...it still does not change the FACTS that I brought up.
It was reported that when MS shipped 8 million Kinects that actually about 5 million were sold to customers...STILL an impressive number but you can see why it is shady at best on MS's part.
So IMO if they have now shipped 10 million Kinects the sell thru must be around 6 million which is again a very impressive number.
I am not saying MS is the only company to channel stuff...however they seem to do it more and BIGGER than most other companies.
Again, we will know next quarter how much MS stuffed the channel with Kinects when the shipped numbers drop like a rock because retailers REFUSE to take anymore simply for no other reason other than they will run out of space to store them all.
@DK286...if the link is just to an anti MS site...how does that explain the numerous links to OTHER articles saying the SAME thing including actual MS SOLD numbers and reduced SHIPMENT numbers? Or this part of the story....
The Fall-Out
I’m sure Chris Liddell was just thrilled at having to stand up in front of the investor community and do a little tap dance around the Xbox 360 channel-stuffing issue. But, of course, he wouldn’t come out and say that, but use some appropriate Alan Greenspan-like euphemisms to convey the point in more oblique terms.
From Reuters 01/25/2007:
LOS ANGELES, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile ,Research) on Thursday cut its fiscal 2007 forecast for Xbox 360 video game console shipments, citing unsold inventories in stores, and said it is trying to make sure its gaming division turns a profit in the upcoming fiscal year.
Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said Microsoft aims to ship a total of 12 million Xbox 360s by the end of its fiscal year on June 30, down from a previous target of 13 million to 15 million.
“We are just being cautious about the second half. It was always going to be a slow half. We’ve done very well in the first half. There is a reasonable amount of inventory in the channel,” Liddell said in an interview with Reuters.
So what is a “reasonable” amount of inventory in the channel, Chris? Does it have anything to do with shipping (not selling, mind you) 4.4 million units in Q4 2006, with a projected 1.6 million units through the first half of 2007? I guess you guys just had to make that magic 10 million number by the end of 2006, didn’t you? But what did it really mean? Not much, in retrospect.
@BeAGamer
Please do not confuse my ridicule for anger...why would I be angry at MS's shady business practices? They have done this for decades...to get mad about it would be illogical.
I think it is funny that so many of you will IGNORE facts just to suit your opinions...kinda like a Fox News viewer.
as much as i congratulate ms on the 10 milll.. i want more hardcore titles..